Yes, Chalamet can sing. But can 鈥楢 Complete Unknown鈥� capture Bob Dylan?
The filmmakers of 鈥淎 Complete Unknown鈥� were faced with a daunting task, our critic writes: How do you get behind the mask of a willfully enigmatic artist like Bob Dylan?
The filmmakers of 鈥淎 Complete Unknown鈥� were faced with a daunting task, our critic writes: How do you get behind the mask of a willfully enigmatic artist like Bob Dylan?
Biopics about music icons occupy a long and occasionally honorable place in the movies. Most recently Maria Callas, Elton John, Freddie Mercury, Leonard Bernstein, Amy Winehouse, and Elvis Presley got the treatment. Jeremy Allen White is set to play Bruce Springsteen.
Now we have Timoth茅e Chalamet as Bob Dylan in 鈥淎 Complete Unknown.鈥� Directed by James Mangold, who co-wrote the script with Jay Cocks, the film is not so much a demystification of Dylan as it is a confirmation of his mystique. The film鈥檚 title is all too descriptive.
Mangold confines the action to between 1961 and 1965, beginning with the 19-year-old Dylan arriving in New York, guitar slung over his shoulder, and culminating in his infamous appearance at the Newport Folk Festival. Playing an electric guitar, rather than his usual acoustic, he outraged many of the event鈥檚 folkies and organizers, who accused him of selling out.
It was fairly obvious, even at the time, that some sort of watershed cultural moment had occurred. As Elijah Wald wrote in his first-rate book 鈥淒ylan Goes Electric!鈥� which the film draws heavily on, 鈥淲hat happened [at] Newport in 1965 was not just a musical disagreement or a single artist breaking with his past. It marked the end of the folk revival as a mass movement and the birth of rock as the mature artistic voice of a generation.鈥�
This is an important story, which is not to say that 鈥淎 Complete Unknown鈥� is an important movie. The soundtrack, of course, is marvelous. (Chalamet acceptably subs for Dylan鈥檚 voice.) But I mostly connected to this film not because it contained anything revelatory, but because its history meshed with my own. It turned into a nostalgia trip, complete with great period recreations of 1960s Greenwich Village. I suspect many others who grew up with Dylan will react the same way. For those who didn鈥檛 experience this era in real time, Chalamet鈥檚 presence 鈥� his youthful movie star aura 鈥� may be enough to carry the film.
But the filmmakers have set themselves a near insoluble task: How do you get behind the mask of a willfully enigmatic artist like Dylan? For the most part, they duck the attempt.
To its credit, at least the movie doesn鈥檛 try to sugarcoat Dylan, whose reputation was never all that warm and fuzzy anyway. He is portrayed throughout as a careerist and a cad. His relationships with women are not pretty. Topping the list of cast-offs is folk goddess Joan Baez (well played by Monica Barbaro, who also does her own singing) and the artist-activist Sylvie Russo, Dylan鈥檚 first serious girlfriend. (She is played by Elle Fanning, and based on the real-life Suze Rotolo.) Dylan disparages Baez鈥檚 music as 鈥渓ike an oil painting in the dentist鈥檚 office.鈥� Russo, often teary-eyed at his disloyalties, tells him at long last, 鈥淚 don鈥檛 know you.鈥�
She鈥檚 not alone. Nobody else in the film really does, either. And that鈥檚 the way Dylan wants it. Born Bobby Zimmerman, the middle-class Jewish kid from northern Minnesota purposefully exhibits few traces from his past. His real historical connection is to the music he loved while growing up. The most touching scene in the movie is right at the beginning, when Dylan visits his folk idol, Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy), in the New Jersey hospital where Guthrie is dying and unable to speak. Dylan plays Guthrie a song he wrote for him.
Present also in this scene is the film鈥檚 other major figure, Pete Seeger (a convincing Edward Norton), the icon who brought Dylan into the folk scene and championed his career until they unceremoniously split at the Newport event. Seeger, a founder of the festival, was a traditionalist. For him, folk music was a way of bringing people together in order to rally progressive causes.
Dylan deflected that role. He may have banded together a generation, but he was never a joiner. For him, the personal always eclipsed the political. I wish Mangold had not simplified the Seeger-Dylan rift. Seeger comes across at times like the genial Mister Rogers of the folk scene, while Dylan is its Marlon Brando. Mangold had an easier time of it when he made the Johnny Cash biopic 鈥淲alk the Line,鈥� but Dylan is a far more complicated character than Cash. What may have begun as a descent into the personal depths of an enigmatic genius ends up as one more cog in the Bob Dylan myth machine.
Peter Rainer is the Monitor鈥檚 film critic. 鈥淎 Complete Unknown鈥� opens in theaters Dec. 25. It is rated R for language.